


Somebody to Love

by torolulu



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Heroes: Volume 2, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-07
Updated: 2012-01-07
Packaged: 2017-10-29 03:39:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/315398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torolulu/pseuds/torolulu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Sylar escapes from Candice, a familiar face finds him in the desert.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Somebody to Love

**Author's Note:**

> An alternate version of Sylar and Mohinder's Season 2 storylines.

Candice ran her hands through the hair of the comatose man assigned to her care. Flattening it down and parting it to the side made him look like one of the photos in his file – the one from before he lost himself. She conjured up some illusions to complete the picture: thick framed glasses, a cardigan, a button-up shirt. In the innocence of sleep he looked every bit the angel that he’s named after.

Candice had been assigned to looking after Sylar for four months. It initially struck her as a waste of her talents, but The Company’s reasoning was that her ability was the most likely of all their current agents to be effective in mollifying him when he woke, should he try to resist containment. It was tedious – especially now that the surgeries were complete and they had been transferred to some shack in Mexico – but Candice was exceptionally skilled at entertaining herself.

She started with reading his file. Sylar, she learned, was a bit of a kindred spirit: an outcast from peers who judged him for how he looked and a disappointment to a family who refused to accept him as he was, Gabriel had reinvented himself into something glorious. He’d created himself, just like she had.

Candice conjured bookshelves to cover the walls of the shack from top to bottom and turned Sylar’s hospital bed into a neatly made single. Imagining places she could have gone – and places she would go – with Sylar had become her favourite hobby. His apartment, the beach, a honeymoon suite – her options were limited to places where you could lie down, but she didn’t particularly mind. One day he would wake up and she would take him wherever he wanted to go.

* * *

“…or something a more familiar, if that’s what you’re into.”

The words were spoken in an immaculate imitation of Mohinder’s accent, but the smug tone was all Michelle.

The implications of the apparition standing before him shocked Sylar. Someone knew.

Someone knew and was using it against him. Someone smart enough to know what intimate desires of his were strong enough to manipulate him with but not smart enough to grasp the depths of the bond of which they were trying to take advantage, expecting him to lower himself to replacing it with a state-of-the-art blow-up doll.

Someone who absolutely had to die.

* * *

 _Bingo_.

Candice took in the widened eyes and shortening of breath that Sylar tried to cover up after his shock subsided. She sort of wished she’d saved some time and started with this, but if her hunch was wrong she might have gotten her face punched in. Some dudes are insecure like that. You don’t want to go making assumptions about them until you’ve seen them reject a threesome with twin swimsuit models.

She’d pieced together her theory from the file that she’d memorized by now, mostly from reports from and interviews with Mohinder Suresh himself after he’d started working for the Company for the first time: Sylar had gone on a road trip with Mohinder Suresh for several days, had been tortured by him, and Suresh had escaped with barely a scratch on him; Sylar had called Suresh in a moment of desperation, asking for his help; when questioned about the specifics of their time together and why he believed Sylar would contact him, Suresh became “stubborn and evasive.” It was still a bit of a shot in the dark, but one that had apparently paid off.

She turned back into her “true” form.

“Don’t you see?” she said. “I can help you. We were meant to do this together.”

He stood up and smiled. Stepping in close to her, he cupped her cheek and told her that she was extraordinary.

She was so happy she almost didn’t see the coffee mug coming straight for her head.

* * *

“I hope you haven’t unpacked your bags, Doctor, because you’re going to be taking another trip.”

“ _What?_ ”

Mohinder’s recent field assignment to Haiti had not exactly been an unmitigated success in the eyes of his employers. He had been hoping that Bob would have decided to ground him until he could learn some responsibility.

“If you’ll have a seat,” Bob says, “I’ll brief you on the details.”

Mohinder sits down in the chair in front of Bob’s desk.

“With all due respect, I feel as though my strengths lie in research rather than the field. I think you’ll agree that my failure to take in the Haitian supports that.”

“Under ordinary circumstances I might agree with you, Doctor, but we’ve found ourselves in a…unique situation. Once you’ve learned the details, I believe you’ll be less reluctant to participate.”

Bob places a large envelope in front of Mohinder on the desk. Mohinder opens it. It contains two manilla folders.

“I’d like to start with an apology,” Bob says. “There are some things I’ve been less than honest about.”

Mohinder reads the label on the top folder:

 **GRAY, Gabriel (Sylar)**

* * *

“You were right. I am going to get my abilities back. Starting with yours.”

Candice wasn’t fast enough to dodge the blow to her head but Sylar wasn’t strong enough to knock her unconscious with one strike either. She rolled away after she hit the floor, making herself appear invisible while leaving an illusion of herself behind her. She felt like her own soul exiting her body. She crawled to a nearby corner of the room and watched Sylar work through her skull with a dull shard of glass.

When he hit brain she recalled something she’d said earlier: _“I used to go by Candice, but ever since I pulled you off of Kirby Plaza the police have kind of been looking for my old self. I'm going for a new look.”_ Sylar knew enough about the way abilities work to know they wouldn’t continue to do so if the brain had been damaged.

Candice changed the illusion to one of her original body. It didn’t matter anymore if he saw it and watching it get destroyed was cathartic – not that the sight was anything new. She’d done her share of self-loathing around the time of her reinvention, and discovering illusions had saved a lot of her mirrors.

“So this is what you really look like,” he said. “So silly trying to be something you’re not.”

As if he wasn’t exactly the same as her.

In the end he didn’t get her power – well, no shit, but he wouldn’t have gotten it even if that blood he’d wiped off his hands was real – and she kind of wanted to gloat while she watched his epic hissyfit, but she remained where she was until he staggered out the door.

* * *

Sylar wakes up handcuffed in the back of a Nissan. He doesn’t remember getting in there – he must have been dragged into the car after collapsing in the desert.

“Are you awake?” asks a familiar voice from the driver’s seat.

 _Mohinder?_

“There are several bottles of water on the seat beside you. Help yourself. Is your wound bothering you?”

Every time the car goes over a bump he thinks he’s going to die.

“No.”

“OK,” Mohinder says. “If it starts bothering you let me know – I have some morphine in a medical kit in the trunk.”

The pain is the only thing convincing Sylar that this is not a heat-induced hallucination.

“Will do.”

Sylar picks up a water bottle and tries the open it with his cuffed hands. It’s too awkward. He holds it in both hands and twists off the cap with his teeth instead. He chugs it down without stopping for breath and then does the same thing with a second bottle.

“Where are you taking me?”

“I work for an organization called The Company. I believe you’re familiar with them. I’m taking you to their facilities in…”

Sylar cuts Mohinder’s words off with the chain of his cuffs around Mohinder’s throat.

Mohinder tries to thrash Sylar off, swerving the car all over the deserted highway.

“Stop the car!” Sylar yells.

Mohinder complies quickly. Sylar loosens his hold enough for Mohinder to breathe but keeps his hands where they are. He leans as close as he can to Mohinder’s ear.

“You are going to take your cell phone, your wallet, the keys to these cuffs, and any paper work you have on your person and you’re going to put it all on the passenger seat. Then you’re going to get out of this car and start walking south until you can’t see this car anymore. If you don’t, I will crush your windpipe.”

“I could die out here,” Mohinder says as he starts to empty his pockets.

“Not my concern.”

“Yes, it is. I’m the only person who can fix your abilities.”

 _That_ gets Sylar’s attention. He’s distracted enough that he doesn’t even see Mohinder reaching for a gun before one is trained on him.

“Get off me,” Mohinder orders.

Sylar lifts his hands back above Mohinder’s head and places them in his lap. Mohinder holsters his gun, starts the car, and pulls back onto the road.

* * *

“Are you going to tell me what happened to my abilities?” Sylar asks after twenty minutes of silence.

“You’ve been infected with a virus that afflicts only those with abilities. Loss of the use of your abilities is only the first symptom. Without treatment, it’s always fatal.”

“There’s a cure?” Sylar asks.

“Yes.”

“Will you give it to me?”

“I don’t know yet,” Mohinder says. “After what you did to me, I should just let you die.”

“Why don’t you?”

Mohinder doesn’t answer.

“What’s the cure?”

“My blood.”

Sylar chuckles. “Life has it’s poetry.”

* * *

Mohinder pulls over to the side of the road.

“I need to change your bandages and clean your wound,” he explains.

He gets out of the car and opens the trunk, pulling out a medical kit. He rests the medical kit on top of the car and opens Sylar’s door to help him out.

“I’m going to uncuff you,” he says while taking a key out of his pocket. “You’re going to take off your shirt to give me access to your wound. If you try anything, I will shoot you.”

Once Sylar’s hands are uncuffed and his shirt is off, he leans against the hood of the car.

“Is the virus the same one your sister had?” he asks.

“What?”

“Your father told me Shanti had a virus. That you were conceived in order to save her. Is it the same virus?”

“Yes. The Shanti virus,” Mohinder says as he removes Sylar’s bandages. He pours some antiseptic onto a cotton pad.

“This is going to hurt,” he cautions and Sylar is surprised at the lack of irony in his voice at the familiar warning.

“Did you do this to me, Mohinder?” Sylar asks as Mohinder presses the cotton against his chest.

“Hiro Nakamura did this to you,” Mohinder says.

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

“Not me personally.” Mohinder puts a square of gauze against Sylar’s chest. “Hold this.”

“But the Company did, right?” Sylar holds the gauze to his chest while Mohinder rips off pieces of tape. “They intentionally infected me with the virus that killed your sister.”

Mohinder smoothes the tape across Sylar’s chest with his fingertips.

“We’re done here. Put your shirt on and get back in the car.”

Mohinder opens the passenger door for Sylar. He doesn’t bother putting the handcuffs back on him.

* * *

They make it across the border with an ease that surprises Sylar, but he supposes that a covert operation like the Company would be skilled at manufacturing the necessary paperwork for the situation.

They’re in California now. He knows that the Company has facilities in Texas and he assumes that’s where they're headed.

California to Texas is a route that he’s travelled before: Walker to Bennet, with a break for Andrews. If he remembers correctly, he has about 20 hours to get through to Mohinder.

“Why did they send you alone for me?” he asks.

“They believed I had the ability to mollify you.”

“They believe you’re expendable. They sent you after a dangerous killer without back-up. Why would they do that, Mohinder?”

Mohinder is silent for several minutes. Sylar thinks that he's decided to ignore him until he says, distantly: "That's a really good question."

“We should stop for the night,” Sylar suggests and Mohinder agrees.

* * *

They make it to a hotel not unlike the one they stayed in on their last journey. Sylar’s status as Mohinder’s prisoner means that they share a room this time, like they should have back then.

Mohinder lets Sylar shower first, then cuffs Sylar to the frame of the bed furthest from the door while he showers himself.

Sylar lies on the bed in his boxers, his arms above his head, staring at the ceiling. He hears the bathroom door open and turns his head to see Mohinder walking out, also clad only in boxer shorts, his wet hair slicked back and his skin still dewy.

“I’ll clean your wound and change your bandages,” he says. “Then we can get some sleep.”

Mohinder picks up his medical bag and sits on the edge of Sylar’s bed. He cleans the wound with antiseptic again, even more gently than the first time. Then he places a new gauze bandage on it and rips off several pieces of tape. He presses the tape to the edges of the gauze and smoothes it down with his the tips of his index fingers. His other fingers graze down Sylar’s chest as he does it.

Mohinder raises his gaze from Sylar’s chest to his face. Sylar lifts his head up as much as he can and Mohinder leans in the rest of the distance, lifting his right leg over Sylar’s body to straddle him as they kiss. He moves his hands to the bed on either side of Sylar, in order to prevent his body from putting weight on Sylar’s injury.

Mohinder’s kisses move down to Sylar’s jaw and neck. He shifts his weight to his legs so that he can move his hands to Sylar’s sides, sliding them up and down from his abdomen to his chest.

His kisses continue lower, following the path of his hands, until he reaches the waistband of Sylar’s boxers. He removes them and lowers his head and Sylar wishes Mohinder had removed the cuffs so he could run his fingers through Mohinder’s hair like he’s always wanted to, but he can’t bring himself to tell Mohinder to stop long enough for him to free Sylar’s hands.

Sylar lifts his head to watch. It’s a strain to his neck when he’s in this position, unable to rest his head in his heads, but the sight is well worth it.

When Sylar climaxes his hips jerk and his muscles clench, his body involuntarily curling in on itself. He thinks he might black out from the combination of pleasure and excruciating pain.

It’ll probably kill him, but he wants to repay Mohinder a hundred fold for what’s he’s just given him.

“You can fuck me if you want,” he says, impulsively. “You don’t have to uncuff me.” But he must have screamed louder than he thought he had because the way Mohinder is looking at him now is more fear and concern than arousal.

“I think that’ll have to wait,” Mohinder says. “I’m concerned you may have torn your stitches.”

Mohinder pulls Sylar’s boxers back on and lifts up his bandage to check the condition of his wound. Apparently satisfied, he replaces the bandage and pulls Sylar’s covers over top of him.

“I’m sorry,” he says and he turns off the light and crawls into his own bed, leaving Sylar chained up in the dark.

* * *

When Sylar wakes up his arms are sore but free.

The bathroom door opens and Mohinder enters the room.

“You can shower,” he says, “but be quick about it. They’ll be sending a team for us soon.”

“Sending a team for us? Who?”

“The Company,” Mohinder says. “When I fail to bring you in.”

“Oh, god.” Sylar marches straight to Mohinder, grabs his face, and kisses him hard.

Mohinder pulls away before things get too heated.

“Hurry,” he says.

Sylar reluctantly lets go and heads to the bathroom.

“You do have time to brush you teeth though,” he hears behind him.

He smiles and looks over his shoulder at Mohinder smiling back at him, and feels a genuine camaraderie that he’d never had with anyone, ever, in his life.

* * *

Sylar suggests they stop for breakfast, so Mohinder pulls into the lot of a truck stop diner. On their way inside they pass a blonde woman who gives them a double take and then runs off. Mohinder doesn’t seem to notice her.

“That girl,” Sylar asks after they’ve finished eating. “Candice or Michelle or whatever her name was. She works for the Company too, right?”

“She did.”

“She said she saved me. Did you have anything to do with that?”

“That was four months ago. I was recruited less than a week ago. Why would you think that?”

“No reason.”

“Do you wish I had?” Mohinder asks.

The door of the diner opens and Sylar looks over his shoulder to see the woman he noticed earlier walk in with a male companion. This time she walks past him as if he wasn’t even there.

“We should go,” Mohinder says.

* * *

“Where are we going now?” Sylar asks when they’re on the road again.

“I don’t know.”

“What are we going to do about the virus? You said it’s fatal.”

Sylar is careful not to bring up his more pressing concern, worried that any mention of his desire to regain his ill-gotten abilities will destroy their burgeoning trust.

Mohinder appears to think on Sylar’s words for several moments before he answers.

“We’ll have to break into the Company’s storage facilities in Texas,” Mohinder says. “We’ll steal the cure.”

“Don’t we already have the cure?” Sylar asks.

“What do you mean?”

“Isn’t it your blood?”

“Oh, right. Yes,” Mohinder says. “But my blood is only one component. We’ll need to steal the rest.”

“Can you get us in?”

“Yes. And when you get your abilities back I don’t think anyone will be stopping us on the way out.”

Mohinder’s smile is bright and untroubled.

* * *

Getting into the Company is as easy as walking through the front door. Mohinder just has to present Sylar as his prisoner and flash his I.D. and no one gives him any trouble. Sylar raises an eyebrow at some of the comments – “Back so soon? Where’s your partner?” –but he recognizes that now is an inappropriate time to ask.

Eventually they get to a storage refrigerator. Mohinder selects a vial from the shelf and fills a syringe with it. He takes Sylar’s arm.

“I’m not very experienced with this,” he warns.

“It can’t be worse than last time.”

Mohinder sticks the needle into Sylar’s arm and presses down on the plunger.

Sylar feels his abilities slowly returning to him as the blood rushes through his veins. He feels his memory filled with the verbatim content of every book he’s read since the last time he was in Texas. He feels the gears turning in every clock in the room. He hears the heartbeat of every person in the building.

He hears the heartbeat of the person in front of him.

It’s not familiar.

Sylar uses his telekinesis to throw Mohinder against the wall.

“You’re not Mohinder,” he says. He stalks toward the person wearing his lover’s face.

“Of course I am!” Mohinder says.

Sylar pulls his hand toward himself and then pushes it back. Mohinder’s body slams against the wall again.

“No, you’re not.”

“I might as well be,” Mohinder says.

Sylar twitches his fingers and Mohinder’s head snaps back and hits the concrete behind him as if he’s been punched.

Mohinder shimmers and Michelle appears in his place.

“Where is he?” Sylar says. “What have you people done with him?”

Michelle giggles. “You still don’t get it do you, honey? That’s cute.”

Sylar rakes his hand against the air and a bloody gash appears across Michelle’s cheek.

“It was me,” she says. “It was always me. You fell in love with me. Your precious Mohinder is probably off banging his pretty new blonde partner while the two of them hunt you down like a dog.”

“You manipulated me,” Sylar says.

He’s so angry he needs to struggle to contain the nuclear energy building inside of him.

He should have known.

How could he not have known?

“I can still be him. A better version of him. I can be anything you need.”

“I only needed Mohinder to get my abilities back. And now that I have them…”

Sylar raises an arm and points a finger at Michelle’s head.

* * *

Candice struggles against the force pinning her to the wall.

Sylar’s right. He never needed Mohinder for anything but getting his abilities back. Everything else – everything but the blood in his veins – was her.

She would have told him eventually – after they’d been together for a while – but by that time he wouldn’t even care. He’d look at her and see the person who had saved his life, who had restored his powers, and he’d realize that he’d fallen for the person that he’d come to know over these past weeks (or months or years) and that it didn’t matter if that was the same person as the one he’d lusted over for three days in another lifetime.

“We could have been something special,” she says as the first drops of blood start to slide down her face.


End file.
